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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Little Old Belgium 

By 
Reginald Wright Kauffman 

Author of "The House of Bondage," "The Spider's 
Web," "Jim," etc. 



HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY 
PHILADELPHIA 



r 



Copyright, 1914 
By Howard E. Altemus 



NOV 11 1914 

©GI,A388339 

4m 



To 

BRAND WHITLOCK 

Minister to Belgium from the United States of America: 

A Literary Artist ; An Honest Diplomat ; 

A Fearless Man. 



HoTum omnium fortissimi sunt Bdgae, 
—Julius Caesar, 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



Some of these verses I was fortunate enough 
to be able to write within view of the deeds that 
they inadequately reflect. Most are my own; a 
few are translations or adaptations of Belgian 
soldier-songs; a pair were composed before the 
present war and later altered; part of one I 
heard chanted, and seemingly improvised, by a 
maddened woman amid the ruins of Louvain, 
In its original, the rhythm of ^'The Belgian 
Marching- Song" was rather like the inimitable 
''Marching Song" by Berton Braley, and this 
similarity I have tried to increase. I should add 
that "Little Old Belgium" is not merely an 
American slang phrase : the Belgian soldier af- 
fectionately designates his country as ''Belgique, 
ma petite vieilleJ' 

R. W. K. 
Near Gavere, 

Flandre Orient, 
15th. Sept., 1914. 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



PEACE-AT-ANY-PRICE. 



My voice has been for peace : I would not dim 
One woman's eyes for all war's high renown; 
Nor could I see in any captured town 
A glory more miraculous than grim. 
But here is he that wrenches limb from limb 
The lesser and the braver : this crowned clo^n 
Who thinks the world must tremble at his 
frown — 
This foul Mad Dog of Potsdam: what of him! 
**For blood and iron!" cried his Chancellor; 
And * * Iron and blood ! " his echoing would not 
cease : 
Then drain his faithless veins with iron's 

blow. 
I am for peace at any price and so, 
To kill this foaming hound that knows no 
peace, 
I am for peace at this price: this Red War. 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



THE NATIONS' DAYID. 



Erect before Hell's hurricane, 

Between the German and the sea, 
Belgium, still smiling through your pain, 

Still radiant and brave and free : 
While yet the cannon's note resounds 

Along each poplar-bordered way, 
O, bleeding Belgium, to your wounds 

What mankind owes, what man may say? 



11 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

Long years, while battle came and went 

Afar at Fate's malign caprice, 
Your kindly folk, serene, content. 

Pursued the placid paths of peace. 
They promised, all the mighty ones : 

''In that calm land shall not be heard 
The thunder of our angry guns'' — 

Kaiser and King, they pledged their word. 

And then, unwarning, arrogant, 

The cut-throat liar of Berlin 
Tore into shreds his covenant: 

His armed hordes were swarming in; 
From Prussian beer-halls, Rhinish hills, 

From Aurich east to Gumbinnen, 
From Rostock down to stolen Silz, 

Sounded the tramp of Krupp-made men. 



13 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

This was your guardian-brother's gift, 

The choice he gave his little ward: 
Betrayal of France (the course of thrift), 

Or (Honour's course) the crimsoned sword. 
And you, the Nations' David, chose; 

While all the world stood trembling by. 
You called your sons, and they arose : 

''Come forth to die — come forth to die!" 

Your weaver stopped his whirring loom ; 

As Caesar met him, even so now 
Your farmer hurried to his doom 

And in its furrow left the plough; 
And Flanders, Hainant, Brabant came, 

Antwerp and Limbourg — all the land: 
The nameless and the proud of name, 

Shoulder to shoulder, hand-in-hand. 



15 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

Not for adventure, nor in pride; 

With naught to gain and all to lose — 
Their homes, their wives, 
Their lives 

Beside — 

True sons of you, — they too could choose. 
They came — with eyes that looked on death; 

Not conscript slaves, but conscious men: 
The Brugan burgher scant of breath. 

The lean-limbed hunter of Ardennes. 



Their part it was to hold the gate. 

The narrow gate, against a foe 
Outnumbering scores to one — to wait 

Till Death alone should bid them go. 
And how they held it ! Man and child : 

About Liege where Leman fed 
Blood-hungry Prussians blood and piled 

The meadows with heroic dead; 



17 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

"While village after village fell, 

Cottage and church engulfed in smoke; 

While all the land became a Hell 
And served to turn a Teuton joke; 

"While Belgian women prayed in vain 
For German mercy, trusting, fond; 

While German ''Culture" burned Louvain, 
And German "Tenderness" Termonde: 

You did it, Little Belgium — you! 

You stopped the dyke with half your sons; 
You did what no one else could do 

Against the Vandals and the Huns ! 
The eternal future in your debt 

From now until man's latest day. 
How can the wondering world forget — 

And how, remembering, repay? 



19 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

France, England, Russia: they have fought 

As fits the vast initiate; 
You, all unready, but unbought. 

Till they were marshalled held the gate. 
Above all clamour and applause, 

You stand, whatever else befall, 
God's David in mankind's high cause: 

Belgium, the bravest of them all! 



21 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



BELGIUM DE PROFUNDIS. 

(After the Massacre at Louvain.) 



Out of the deep ! Out of the deep ! 
For them that wake and them that sleep; 
For them that sleep no more to wake, 
And them that wake with hearts that break ; 
There, by the summer-blue North Sea, 
Out of the deep they call to Thee. 



23 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



O God, so mighty is Thy blow 
That why they fell they may not know; 
So vast the Law Thyself hast writ 
That they may never measure it : 
Yet, though Thou send this agony, 
Out of the deep they call — to Thee. 



"With tongues that seem so still in death, 

With tortured mouths that scarce draw breath, 

In ruin dealt for no offense, 

In penurj^ and pestilence, 

"When Thy love seems a mockery, 

Out of the deep they call to Thee. 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



And i^e— through all this world of Thine, 

Who blindly follow Thy design — 

Still in each terror-mastered soul, 

Though strength be shattered, faith is whole 

From land to land and sea to sea, 

Out of the deep we call to Thee. 



Somehow at last the night shall fade, 
Sometime the riddle plain be made, 
Somewhere the broken lives of men 
Be gathered by Thy hand again : 
Maker — not Destroyer — ^we — 
Out of the deep we call to Thee. 



27 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



THE PURPLE MOMENT. 

(A Belgian Soldier Speaks.) 



Give me to die when life is high: 
The sudden thrust, the quick release. 

Full in the front, in harness, not 
A slow decay in timorous peace. 

What of the German millions now ? 

I would not shirk the joy of strife, 
Nor lose one flash of perfect death 

For sluggard years of coward life. 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

My breath, which is God's gift to me, 
Exulting waits His high behest; 

My heart, which moves at His command, 
At His command will gladly rest. 

For who would tarry, when He calls, 

To haggle at the heavy toll, 
And render to ungrudging God 

The insult of a niggard soul? 



31 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



HOME. 



(At a pillaged hamlet near Termonde, I asked a dying 
peasant-woman into which of the houses still standing 
I should assist her — which was her home. She pressed 
a withered hand to her bayonet-pierced side and an- 
swered: ^*The Germans have taken one home from me; 
but, without knowing it, they have given me another. I 
am going there now.") 



My house that I so soon shall own 

Is builded in a silent place, 
Not uncompanioned or alone, 

But shared by almost all my race ; 
No landscape from its windows rolls 

A picture of the earth's increase; 
But, oh, for all our stricken souls, 

Within its sturdy walls is — Peace. 



33 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

The other house I used to love 

Before they burnt it overhead; 
My slaughtered man ; the memory of 

Our daughter screaming in the red 
Embrace of Uhlans at my door, 

Her shrieks all silenced by their shout 
Of drunken fury — this is war, 

And my new home will shut it out. 

I shall not see the German hands 

That tear the baby from the breast; 
I shall not hear the plundering bands 

Laughing at murder: I shall rest. 
There Joy shall never riot in. 

Nor robber Sorrow find his way; 
Those shutters bar the call of Sin, 

And Duty has no debt to pay. 



35 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

So much I shall be heedless of 

Serene, secure, dispassionate: 
There is not anything to love ; 

There is not anything to hate. 
So in my house I shall forget 

All of the orgies and the strife, 
And find, past memory and regret, 

The Resurrection and the Life. 



37 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



A BELGIAN MOTHER. 



*'Your son fell at Namur": to Herent sped 
This word for one who used of old to live 

Where now reigned wrack. She raised her sil- 
vered head: 
'*My only son ! Would I had ten to give !" 



39 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



THE COMFORTER. 



(Of a wounded priest, assisting other wounded in 
the ruins of Louvain, I asked, ''What will come of all 
this?" He looked at me with the eyes of faith: 
*'God," he answered.) 

Out of the bitter darkness cometh light! 

That we believe though we have never seen. 
Surpassing all the realm of sense, 
Unlearned from long experience: 
For every wrong some recompense of right — 
Faith's triumph in the face of seeming fact; 
The thought of Justice — ^surely, this has 
been — 
Implanted only by the Omniscient Act ! 



41 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

The ages pass, and man goes down to death, 

But this lives on through every argument ; 
One sins and many suffer, and the breath 

Of nations' prayers seems impotently spent — 
In lamentation on the unheeding air; 

Yet still we cling to that vague benison. 
Seeing the foul dethrone the acknowledged fair, 
Seeing wrong crowned, and seeing everywhere 

Injustice in the name of Justice done. 

So, when black ruin crushes into dust 

Our House of Hope and Life, it rises there, 

A phoenix from the embers: blind-eyed Trust, 

The sobbing faith, strong-winged, that He is 

just ;— 

That even yet, somehow, sometime, somewhere, 

Though down strange ways, nor seen, nor 

understood, — 
Where ancient evil flowers into good. 
Comes God, upon the footsteps of Despair. 



43 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



ON BIVOUAC. 



(A Belgian soldier, bivouaeing on the battlefield, 
showed me a locket containing the picture of his 
sweetheart. ''We are all waiting for death here/* he 
said; *'but for me, I pass the time of waiting in 
thinking of her/') 

Steadfast and true! 

To you — ^to you 
My heart goes singing through the night 

And, tireless, smiles 

Across the miles 
That fail to thwart its dear delight, 



45 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



The searehlamps' play 
Makes streaks of day, 

On night's calm canopy outspread; 
In that dull glow 
Due south, we know, 

The Germans bum our soldier-dead. 

Beside me, deep 

In kindly sleep, 
My comrades of the battle wait 

That summons clear 

(The time is near!) 
Which sends us to our certain fate. 



47 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



The world of deed, 
Whose only creed 
Is action, passes blindly by, 
Unheeding, and 
Here, close at hand, 
"We stand together: you and I! 



What difference 

Though walls of sense 
Build up the barrier that seems 

To duller wit 

Too strong for it? 
We have the key : we have our dreams ! 



49 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM. 



(Antwerp: After the fall of Namur, many Belgian 
women refused to wear black for their dead, saying 
that it was no reason for sorrow that their loved 
ones should have died for their country.) 

For your dear sake, now you are gone, 

I am content to labour on ; 

To wait until the day be through, 

And smile — as you would have me do, 

Leaving the livery of woe 

For them that lighter sorrows know. 

And good and ill serenely take 

Unto this last — for your dear sake. 



51 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

For your dear sake, who wooed and won, 

I love the earth you trod upon, 

Nor search in vain the starlit skies 

For those clear stars that were your eyes; 

But read, with your firm faith for key, 

The riddle of eternity 

In that high hope no doubts can shake — 

Once yours, now mine for your dear sake. 

For your dear sake I bow my head 
And hear God's awful judgment read; 
I know that He who sent me you 
Can naught of evil plan or do; 
And cry, within the church-aisle dim: 
**Lord, I believe — because of him! 
You gave me him and took him; take 
My soul to his — for his dear sake!*' 



53 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



GLORY. 



I know that hamlet well : a single street 
Bordered with cottages, where faces sweet — 
Wives at their household tasks, and mild old men 
Dreaming their younger yesterdays again 
In silent sunshine — smiled at everyone; 
Where, with the setting of the gentle sun, 
The husbands from the fields came singing home. 
And where their children all day long would 

roam 
Till evening, when the whispering poplar-boughs 
Echoed the music of young lovers ' vows. 
A hundred years it had been so — and so 
I knew that hamlet one short month ago. 



55 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

Then I came back: a single house stood there; 
The rest were smoke upon the August air 
And ruins in the obliterated road. 
A German sentry through the ashes strode ; 
An old man's body, grey hair splashed with red, 
Lay in the gutter ; toward a blackened shed, 
Flushed face aglow and savage lip acurl, 
A death-grimed Uhlan dragged a little girl; 
A strangled baby lay beside the stream; 
Far in the dusk I heard a woman scream, 
And from the inn-porch, dark with blood and 

wine, 
Roared forth the chorus of the Wacht Am Bhein. 



57 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



MAW-WORM. 



*'How magnificently God fought for our son/' 

— The Kaiser. 

You call on God! You juggle with Christ ^s 
name, 
Wilhelm, the Treaty-Breaker, 'round whose 
throne 
The incense curls of every bestial shame — 
Why, Herod's hands are white beside your 
own! 



59 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

''Peace upon earth, good will to all'^: with this 
Christ came to men whose world was black 
from loss, 
And they betrayed Him with a traitor's kiss 
And nailed the hands that blessed them to the 
Cross. 

Those He has pardoned. — ^Who can pardon pray 
With that foul mark which brands your cow- 
ard-brow ? 
They slew and knew not ; you, though knowing, 
slay: 
Even God's mercy will not save you now! 



61 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



BUEGHERMEISTER MAX. 

(A Soldier-Chant) 



(Note. — The Belgians pronounce this name in the 
fashion of their adversaries: i. e., with a broad "a.") 

What of Burghermeister Max 

When the Germans came to Brussels? — 
They, accustomed to hard knocks, 

Fresh from seven mighty tussles; 
He, a man of no renown, 
Said: ''I mean to save the town/' 



63 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



''Save it?" Everybody laughed! 

''We've no forts, and where 's the army?" 
Those who were not weeping chaffed. 

Max said: "Don't let that alarm ye. 
Send the Garde Civique away; 
Trust me, and I'll save the day." 

"Here's our court-house," they complained: 
"Watch the Germans make it tinder! 

Half our men are now entrained ; 
Who are we to fight or hinder! 

There's that fountain by Grupello — 

Destined for some Berlin fellow!" 



65 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



Max said : * ' Fetch me out a horse ; 

I will make them stand from under; 
I will meet them in full force : 

I — and someone else, by thunder! 
Fetch tivo horses: for, you see, 
Whitlock takes a ride with me." 

General von What 's-his-Name 

Met them with his Germans mighty; 

Threatened cannon, sword and flame. 
Max, who wore for shirt his nightie 

Hastily tucked into his trouser, 

Waited and then answered: "How, sir, 



67 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



'* Here's the fairest town on earth, 
And you'd tear it up, you vulture? 

"Wouldn't it be something worth 
If, to bribe your German Culture, 

I should, rather, frankly say: 

'You need money: make it pay 

Your Napoleon manque' — 
Take it, make it foot the rent : 

Kecall your Emperor's percent." 

General von What 's-his-Name 

Saw the point; was somewhat flustered; 
Feigned the virtue of a shame ; 

Made a face like German mustard. 
^^Aber," said he, ''one point you miss: 
"What do / get out of this?" 

Max at Whitlock looked intent; 

Said Whitlock: "Not a copper cent." 



69 



LITTLE OLD B E L G I tJ M 



General von What *s-his-Name 

Tore his nightly-crimped moustache; 

Talked again of sword and flame; 
Uttered threats supremely rash. 

''Nix?" he echoed: ''You're who, pray?" 

Whitlock said: ''The U. S. A." 

That sufficed. Old What 's-his-Name 
Saw a light and saw it quickly; 

Got into another frame 

Of mind, and thence attended strictly 

To his master's share of rent 

(It was 25%). 



71 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



So, though Prussian troops complained, 

The court-house didn't serve for tinder; 
Quite intact the town remained, 

When but two men stood to hinder 
All the Germans bred to knocks : 
Monsieur le Burghermeister Max 

And — ''Pardon, what name did you sayf 

^'Whitlock, of the U. S. A." 



73 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 



BELGIAN MARCHING-SONG. 



(I first heard this song sung near Antwerp by a 
regiment lately from the front and about to return 
there. The slang here given is, of course, the freest of 
free translations.) 

Are you built for a fight ? 
Are your timbers tight? 

Can you march with an empty skin 
For a day and end 
With a scrap, my friend, 

There's devil a chance to win? 
Can you thirst and starve? 
Can you lunge and carve? 

Is your trigger-finger true? 
Would you rather bite hay 
Than run away? 

Then here is the job for you! 

Come follow the Yellow-and-blaek-and-red ! 
Thank God who made you so ! 
Here's fame and death 
In a single breath: 
So follow the Flag, lad — go! 



75 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

We're all of us sick 
For a double-quick 

At the German Martinet: 
We took the cure 
At grim Namur, 

But we've got the fever yet. 
We've carved at his head 
And his eyeballs red, 

And now we'll pepper his paw; 
He's ten to one: 
It's easily done — 
We'll pickle the Kaiser's jaw! 

Come follow the Yellow-and-black-and-red ! 
Thank God that made you so ! 
Here's fame and death 
In a single breath: 
So follow the Flag, lad — go! 



77 



LITTLE OLD BELGIUM 

Step in, step in: 
The lines are thin, 

But they 're filling rank by rank ! 
Play hide-and-seek 
With the Prussian meek; 

Then charge on his tender flank. 
He's a cultured soul; 
When he gets his toll, 

He says, he '11 be humane ! 
Will he spare your life? 
Did he spare your wife ? 
Then how about Louvain? 

So follow the Yellow-and-black-and-red ! 
Thank God for the tattered rag ! 
Go, say good-bye, 
Then come and die — 
Come follow the Belgian Flag! 



7^ 



